March 30, 2022 • 40 mins
Arizona police are searching for a person of interest after a deceased newborn was reportedly found in a McDonald's bathroom. Surveillance video shows a woman entering and leaving the restroom just before the baby was found. Police are not saying she is the mother, but do want to question her. The Phoenix Fire Department pronounced the baby boy dead after responding to a call at a Phoenix McDonald’s. An autopsy is pending. The woman in the surveillance footage was wearing a black Calvin Klein shirt, black pants, and sandals. Anyone with information regarding this case should call the Phoenix Police Department or Silent Witness at 480-948-6377.
Joining Nancy Grace Today:
- Kathryn Marsh - Special Victims Liaison for the State’s Attorney's Office (Charles County, MD), Co-Founder: Right Response Consulting, "No Grey Zone" Podcast", www.rightresponseconsulting.com, Instagram/Twitter @nogreyzoneRRC
- Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, www.drbethanymarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire' (Beverly Hills)
- Dr. Kendall Crowns – Chief Medical Examiner Tarrant County (Ft Worth), Lecturer: University of Texas and Texas A&M, Affiliated Faculty: University of Texas Medical Branch
- Greg Scheffer - Investigator: International Anti Human Trafficking Organization "Hope for Justice", Former Phoenix Police Department Detective, 22 Years Specializing in Child Sexual Exploitation, Crimes Against Children, Domestic Violence and Adult Sex Crimes
- Bianca Buono - Reporter, 12 News (Phoenix, AZ), Twitter: @BiancaBuono, 12news.com
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Crime Stories with Nancy Greece all across America at this
very minute, people are going to McDonald's, whether you drive through,
or a diet coke or a decaf, whether you go
in for a big mac. That slogan sticks in everybody's
(00:30):
mind in the back to all be Patty special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles,
and he's on a sesame seed bun. You can get
whatever you want there, but the shock of a lifetime
one McDonald's customer's got. It's something she'll never forget. I
Meanancy Grace, this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being
with us here at Fox Nation and Serious XM one eleven.
(00:54):
I very often told yourrs when I saw them cringe
or turn away, I felt the same way reviewing the evidence,
much less delivering the message to the jury. But I
begged them, do not turn away from the truth. Take
a listen to our friends at three TV and CBS five.
(01:18):
It's just as awful as you can imagine. Somebody inside
of that McDonald's restaurant found the child's body, and tonight,
with the help of surveillance video, please hope they can
catch mom. I was responsible. New video shows the women
police are looking for last scene wearing a black Calvin
Kleine's shirt, black pants and sandals, who left the bathroom
around the same time. Police say someone found a dead
(01:41):
newborn baby twenty four hours removed from a horrifying scene,
and the restaurant is still open with some people changing
their lunch plans when we told them what happened. I
think somebody that would do that like that man. Wow.
Phoenix Police responded to the fast food locations Sunday afternoon
after someone inside the restaurant saw the dead newborn. It's
(02:02):
the scene that you can ever be prepared for, is
walking in somewhere and locating an infant, a newborn infant.
Heather Burner, with a National Safe Haven Alliance, says situations
like this should never happen, but it has. She counts
this as the eighth child abandonment this year across America.
That's our friend David called beano speaking guys. According to
(02:27):
one study, eight children abandoned. That's that we know of.
How many other children, babies, infants are either thrown away
in dumpsters or killed and abandoned, their bodies hidden somewhere.
It happens all the time. This time a tiny baby's
(02:53):
body found in a busy McDonald's. Again, I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
You know, I was just talking about telling a jury
not to turn away from the evidence, but I actually did.
I let our friends at three TV and CBS five
(03:15):
describe what happened, but I will now describe it. A
tiny baby found in a busy McDonald's near Phoenix, Arizona.
Video surveillance shows a woman walking out wearing a black
Calvin Cline T shirt, black tights. She has long, dark hair,
(03:41):
seems to me it may be frosted. She appears to
be a white female. What more do we know about her?
Not much, but I can guarantee you this, when this
picture is disseminated across the Americas, someone's going to recognize her.
(04:02):
And let me be clear, we are not discussing or
attacking the right to choose the debortion. That's a whole
another cannon worms. What we are talking about is delivering
a child, a healthy child, then murdering the child and
(04:25):
disposing of the body. Catherine marsh is joining US Special
Victims Liaison for State Attorney's Office in Charles County, con
founder of Right Response Counseling and the No Gray Zoned podcast,
also with me. Renowned psychoanalyst joining us from Beverly Hills,
(04:46):
doctor Bethany Marshall, not only renowned psychoanalysts, but star of
a new Netflix series, Bleeding Empire. Doctor Kendall Crowns joining
US Chief Medical Examiner Tarrant County. That's Fort Worth let
Sure University Texas, Texas, A and M. Also faculty at
University Texas Medical Branch. Greg Schaeffer joining US investigator with
(05:09):
the international anti human trafficking organization Hope for Justice, A
former Phoenix PD detective twenty two years. But first, let's
go to special guest reporter with A twelve News Phoenix
Bianca Bono, Bianca, thank you for being with us. Tell
me what happened at the McDonald's. What do we know?
So what we know is that on March twenty seventh,
(05:31):
around two o'clock in the afternoon, in broad daylight. Okay,
wait a minute, you just stole my cash phrase and
broad daylight. I mean, that's a whole nother layer that
we're gonna throw at doctor Bethany Marshall. Will everybody statistically, mentally, psychologically,
broad daylight is a whole nother animal. That said, sorry, Bianca,
(05:56):
Bono twelve news, go ahead is no problem. So police
officers responded to that McDonald's restaurant near thirty third Avenue
and Indian School, about ten minutes northwest of downtown Phoenix,
to a call about an injured person, is what they said.
And when they showed up, they located a newborn baby
(06:17):
boy inside the bathroom of the McDonald's. We're told that
officers then attempted life saving measures, and then the Phoenix
Fire Department showed up and did the same, but unfortunately,
they pronounced that infant dead at the scene. Bianca, you've
got a ranking from the fire Hydrump. You're giving me
so much so quickly, I can't digest it. I've got
(06:41):
a breakdown every sentence you said. Oh, you gave me
a flashback to law school. I was a Shakespearean literature
major when I got a hold of my first US
Supreme Court decision. One sentence can be a paragraph. I
would have to dissect each part of the sentence to
understand what they were saying. Okay, let's take let's take
(07:03):
an analysis. Let's analyze what Bionka Bono has just told us,
first of you, doctor Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst. Doctor Bethany, you're
throwing away at newborn baby boy, an infant dead, And
of course I'm going to come back to you, doctor
Kendall Crowns on how long had the baby been dead?
How do we know could have just died? All that,
(07:26):
I'm going to come back to you. To Greg Sheffer,
how often is this kind of crime, a murder affected
in daylight hours, in broad in plain view. But to
doctor Bethany Marshall, I mean, no shame, no shame. I mean,
there's one thing, dumping a baby in a dumpster out
behind a building at midnight, which is bad enough, But
(07:50):
to have the khonies to walk into a McDonald's in
broad daylight when people are in there ordering their cheeseburgers,
or is David and I deuces, we don't drink soda
at home, A sneaky DCA. I mean, they're in there
and she walks in with a dead baby and leaves
(08:11):
it in the bathroom. There's so many layers. Just let's
start with broad daylight. Nancy. There's a lot of layers.
There's so much to say about this. I mean primarily
to say layers to the onion's that's very old. Please
don't okay, go, Okay, Well, then let's start with the
fact that this woman probably never bonded with this baby,
(08:32):
even in utero, even at conception that something happened in
this woman's life. Have you have you looked at up
because very often people ask me, what are you looking
down at? Well, for the longest time at HLN, they
had installed, as you know, Bethany a baby, a baby
cam so I could see the children because I couldn't
(08:54):
bear to be away from them at night. I remember
the man cam. It was actually part of the disk. Okay,
I look at them on one side and on the
other side, I would look at pictures. That's what I'm
looking at right now. I'm looking at a picture of
her walking out in the black tides, down to the ankle,
some brown sandals. Okay, I'm not sure, but I believe
(09:15):
she's got a pedicure, a black T shirt that says
Calvin Kleine something under it. She's got hair just below
her shoulders. Oh, it's definitely frosted, dark maybe light brown,
hair parted I think kind of in the middle it's long,
and from about the eye level down it looks like
(09:39):
it's been frosted a little bit. That's what I'm looking at. Okay,
go ahead, m well, Nancy. In order to assess the situation,
we could look historically, what happened when she was impregnated,
what happened in terms of her family relationships. Why during
the day, Why is she waddling When I was looking
at the video you're looking at it looks like she's
kind of w budding into the McDonald's and she's waddling out.
(10:03):
And it's hard to know from the security camera what
the time laps is between when she enters the bathroom
and when she aches it. So I have no idea
because I'm a non medical psychoanalyst. Did she give birth
in the bathroom or did she carry the baby in
These are so many questions for other guests, But what
I will say from a psychodynamic perspective is that this
(10:26):
is a woman. While she may have been motivated by
criminality and being homicidal, she likely never bonded with the baby.
And a large recent study of women who secretly abandoned
their babies, one of the things that was learned is
that these women have a great deal of shame about
the pregnancy. They do not bond with the baby from
(10:47):
the time of conception. There's often intimate partner violence, poor
levels of parental support, appolling, lack of prenatal care play.
I know, I know to go with that fine, because
(11:08):
doctor Bessani, I'm not asking you about the historical analysis
of her impregnation. I believe you said that when she
got pregnant, because I don't care, and I don't care
what her family situation is, if she did not want
to commit murder, um don't If don't you have a
very unfettered pro choice position in Arizona. Bianca Bono, the
(11:35):
position is actually largely pro life in Arizona. You do
you do? You have abortion laws there? I mean, can
a woman get an abortion there? She can't. Spring Breakers
and parents beware the disappearance of honor student Natalie Holloway
(11:55):
is a warning. We had to Aruba with Natalie's mom.
What can we learn? Nancy Grace's shocking new investigation streaming
now only on Fox Nation. Sign up today Crime Stories
with Nancy Grace to Katherine Mars joining me special victim's Liaison,
(12:18):
I'm not taking a position for or against abortion. Right now,
I'm not discussing pro choice or pro life right now.
I am discussing murdering a baby right now. You give
birth to the baby and then you murder it. Why
would you inflict that pain on a newborn infant? I
(12:39):
don't organ it, Catherine Well, I think it's a hard
thing for any of us to wrap our mind around.
But as prosecutors, the first thing we have to establish
is was the baby born alive or was it a
stillborn birth? In order for us to get to that
homicide murder component for court. Okay, you know, you just
(13:01):
you're giving me another flashback, because if you're giving birth
to a baby and the baby is stillborn, why would
you just not call nine one one? Why? Because that's
what I would do if I had suddenly given birth
and the baby was still born, I would call nine
one one and try to revive the baby. I would
not put in a bag and dump it. Also, the
(13:22):
fact that nobody is identifying this woman tells me nobody
knews she was pregnant, which means she likely concealed her pregnancy.
Another indicator to doctor Kendall, Crown's chief medical examiner, Tarrant County.
How can we tell if the baby was alive or stillborn? Well,
the main thing you can do is you take the
(13:43):
infant flungs and you placed them in like water, and
if they float, it shows that they had taken a
breath and filled their lungs with the air. Also, you
can look at it histologically or under the microscope looking
for the actual air sex to show expansion. And those
are the two kind of rough indicators for them to
(14:04):
have taken a breath. They're not exact, but they're the
best we have. Doctor Kendall Crowns, I'm just a j
D or the MD. Did you say that one more time?
And very slowly forming place. So the ways you can
tell if an infant has taken a breath at breath
that wasn't born as still born as you can take
the lungs out of the body cavity and so you
(14:25):
have an autopsy. Yes, yes, were the big gigantic cut
the v from the shoulders going mid white in a
straight down like a giant y. Right Go ahead, pluck
the skin away, cut the chest plate off, then take
the lungs out and then he placed the lungs in
(14:46):
a jar of water, and if they float, it shows
that the lungs had had air in them, were filled
with air. You can also cut the lungs up and
take small portions of them and look at them under
a microscope and they you'll see under the microscope that
the air sacks or the alveolol have filled with air,
showing that they took the breath. You know. Greg Shaeffer,
(15:10):
investigator with the international anti human trafficking organization Hope for
Justice and former Phoenix PD twenty two years and Crimes
on Children. Just hearing doctor Kendall Crowns, it's very sobering.
It's very sobering to think of a tiny baby undergoing autopsy,
(15:33):
having its lungs removed and putting them in a jar
of water to see if mommy murdered it. It's kind
of overwhelming. Well, yeah, obviously it's disturbing, and just like
we already talked about, there was no connection to the
child and that's why she allegedly she left it in
the McDonald's. But what's really sad is that there's four
(15:57):
fire stations within five minutes of that location. They're all
safe havens, and there's three hospitals within fifteen minutes of
that location, which were all safe havens as well, So
that child could have been delivered to any one of
those places, no questions asked, no questions asked, the baby
could I had researched that, and I found safe havens
less than ten minutes away from the McDonald's where the
(16:19):
baby was left. You're saying it's actually five minutes. Five minutes, yeah,
Well there's four fire stations right around that McDonald I
used to work in Maryville right there, so there's four
fire stations there, three hospitals less than fifteen minutes away,
one of them Phoenix Children's Hospital. So the child could
(16:40):
have been taken to a facility and turned over and
no questions asked, anonymous, And she could have been on
her way, but she chose this route. It's unfortunate. I
think down the road, you know she's going to get
identified and they'll probably go she's gonna get identified. Speaking
of safe haven take us an our cut too again.
(17:02):
This is David Kultbiano with RETV and CBS five. Arizona
law let's parents who are loved ones surrender unharmed babies
who are up to thirty days old to police departments,
fire stations, and hospitals without repercussion. Heather says, there are
plenty of resources to avoid this crime. The saddest part
of all of this is that they don't have any choices.
(17:23):
They are at the whim or will of their parents.
It's traumatic, I think, because we know there are so
many options now, there are so many safe alternatives to
placing your baby in an unsafe or dangerous situation. Back
to this, McDonald's safe havens are less than a ten
minute drive away. Now people in this area want to
(17:43):
see an arrest. Another look at this security camp video
of the woman police are searching for. Okay, let's talk
about that. How are we gonna find the mom? And
to you Bianca Bono joining us from twelve News and Phoenix.
Has there been any speculation that the child had just
(18:04):
died or was still alive in the bathroom or is
it believed the child was dead when she brought it in.
That's the big question that we're still waiting to get answered.
But what I can tell you is more of what
police told us initially when they notified the public about
this incident. They told us that they did locate the
(18:27):
newborn baby boy inside the bathroom, and they said that
they did attempt life saving measures, and then the scene's
fire department showed up and did the same. I have
read a tiny portion of the police report that says
the boy was pronounced dead at the scene. Anyone with
information is asked asked to contact Silent Witness at four
(18:52):
eight zero Witness WI t N E SS for eight zero.
For those of you just joining us, A newborn infant,
a baby boy, has been found dead at a very
busy McDonald's in the last months. It's the second time
(19:18):
that a child has been abandon Take a listen to
our cut four our friends at kpn X twelve. In
twenty nineteen, another infant was found in the bathroom trash
can at an Amazon warehouse. The mother in that case
later telling officials she didn't know she was pregnant and
had given birth to a stillborn. She was not prosecuted.
In the US this year, in twenty twenty two, there
(19:40):
have been eight illegal abandonments. For some reason, we are
seeing that there are a lot of these cases right
now in Arizona. There are options. Infants can be brought
to a designated safe haven location like hospitals and fire
departments up to thirty days after birth. Why didn't that
happen here now in the case, since this is becoming
(20:02):
the point of our discussion. In the case of the
mother in twenty nineteen, that child was determined to have
been born still born, still a crime to disposed of
human body, but in this case we have no indication
(20:22):
this baby was still born. It's not by far the
first time this has happened. Take a listen to our
friends at Station fifteen on the Allison lightsh case. Now
at six day in court, a young mother who abandoned
her infant inside a dumpster is formally charged with attempted murder.
(20:45):
Good evening, I'm Heather Heren, I'm Mark Bellinger. Thanks for
joining us. Alison Lesh is nineteen. She was emotional as
she appeared in Decalp Superior Court this afternoon where she
entered a plea of not guilty. News Channel fifteen Janie
Allen was inside the courtroom and joins us. Now the
courthouse with the latest well Mark and had there. Alison
lesh gets face up to fifty years behind bars for
(21:05):
attempt and murder. She allegedly gave birth and then threw
her newborn baby away like trash, and tonight we are
learning new shocking details about how she did it. Alison
will tell us what happened. People want to know your
side of the story. Nineteen year old Alison Lesh didn't
have anything to say to our cameras as she made
her way to Declp Superior Court, but she did become
(21:27):
emotional as she neared the door inside. She was formally
charged with attempted murder for allegedly wrapping her newborn baby
girl inside a trash bag and tossing her inside a dumpster.
Lesh had only been living here at Forest Point Apartments
in Auburn for about a month, and court documents are
now shutting some light on the hours leading up to
the discovery of her baby. They say Lush delivered the
(21:49):
baby inside her bedroom late Saturday night. She then wrapped
the newborn in a blanket and left her on the
floor while she cleaned up the mass, showered, and tried
to go to sleep. According to those documents, the next day,
she put the baby in a trash bag and into
the dumpster as she left for work. You know, to you,
doctor Bethany Marshall, we keep seeing the same scenario putting
(22:11):
the baby in a blanket then a trash bag. The
dichotomy of wrapping an infant in a baby blanket and
then putting it in a black trash bag and a dumpster.
It is very disturbing, Yes it is. And you know
what it shows me is actual contempt and hatred for
(22:35):
the child and actually prioritizing the needs of the mother
over that of the child. I know that's going to
sound strange, but think about what motherhood is all about.
When we're a mother, the child's needs are more important
than anybody else on the face of the planet, and
they're more important than our own needs. And contrast that
to double triple wrapping the child like you would a
(22:56):
piece of putred trash in order to hide the child
and put the child in the dumpster. So what that
mother is doing is she's trying to secrete the child
so she won't be caught. It's all about her. It's
the most profound act of selfishness. And layer that with
the fact that this woman we're talking about did it
(23:16):
during the day. Either that's when her labor was complete,
she went into labor and it was time for her
to deliver, or there were people in her life who
would have found out she was pregnant. So she waited
until her boyfriend, her parents, siblings, people were at work
and they wouldn't find out, and that's when she went
(23:37):
and did it. And to me, that's what adds the
layer of criminality, is waiting until everybody else is a way,
so that you do it secretly. There's two kinds of abandonments.
There's open abandonment where you kind of just you leave
the child with a babysitter, you take off, you never
contact the babysitter, or you leave them, leave your child
(23:57):
with the grandparents and then you leave the country. That's
an open abandonment. Then there's a secret one. It's when
you secrete the infant away, you kill the child, or
there's a stillborn like we talked about, you put the
child in a dumpster or in a trash can, and
at that point the child is so devalued, such a
nothing in the mind of the infant of the mother
(24:18):
that it turns the whole idea of motherhood on its
head and it's really a disgusting act. Nancy. The phenomena
of killing your baby at birth was brought to the
forefront with the case of the so called prom mom
Melissa Drexler, who at her prom goes into the bathroom,
(24:41):
gives birth, goes back onto the dance floor, and special
requests the song Unforgiven take a listen to our cut
b this is Unreasonable Doubt podcast. Upon arriving to the whole,
she soon fled to the bathroom. Concerned friends followed Melissa
(25:02):
and started to wait outside the toilet stool she had
barricaded herself into to get rid of her peers. She said,
go tell the boys, I'll be right out. Within just
thirty minutes, Melissa Draxsled delivered a healthy, six pound baby
boy alive. He cut the umbilical cord on the edge
(25:22):
of the metal sanitary waistbin inside the toilet stool. He
then took her baby out of the toilet, wrapped a
series of garbage bags around him, placed him inside into
the garbage bag, and then threw him into the trash. Can.
I mean that's a whole another layer of guilt in
(25:42):
my mind. Let's go out to Katherine Mars joining me
Special Victims Liaison State Attorney's Office. Katherine. There, she goes
out on the dance dooor continues to dance to Metallica's unforgiven. Absolutely.
It certainly goes to show intent, state of mind, and
quite frankly, just how callous she was in the abandonment
(26:03):
in that of the child after she gives birth. The
fact that she could cut the umbilical cord, wrap the
child and then take the child to the trash, those
are all steps that go to the premeditation and laying
every single bit of it out in front of a jury.
To Bianca Bona, a reporter with Knees twelve in Phoenix,
(26:25):
that's a really good surveillance video. I find it very
hard to believe she has not been identified yet. Where
has this been disseminated. It's been disseminated all over the
Greater Phoenix area and actually really across the entire state
of Arizona. And you're right, the video is crystal clear,
and it's a long video as well, so you get
(26:46):
a really good look at her top to bottom as
she goes to walk into the bathroom, attempts to open
the door a first time and it's locked, and then
goes back up second time. So it's a fairly long video.
So as of the latest information we have from police,
she hasn't been identified, but they're doing so much behind
the scenes, so I wouldn't be shocked if they already
(27:09):
know who this person is, you know. Another issue is
McDonald's has surveillance video on the inside, video surveillance cams
on the inside and the outside. To Greg Cheffer, I
find it really difficult to believe that there is not
video of her leaving getting into some kind of a car,
even if you can't see the tag, which I believe
(27:30):
in Arizona you have tag on the front and the back,
not just the back as in many states. But even
if you can't see the tag, you can get the model, make,
and color of the car, figure out how many people
in that area have that car. That's not hard to do.
Then cross reference to driver's license once you get title
(27:51):
and registration. I mean, it takes a minute. It takes
somebody to sit down and do that research. But that's
how to do it right. Well, Like like she said,
they're probably doing a lot of that behind the scenes.
They're probably they probably grabbed all the footage and then
an entire square right there and they're going through it
(28:12):
doing that. I think there's a Costco right over there too,
and Costco usually has really good footage as well. Oh oh,
I imagine they're doing that across the street. Really, Oh,
it's in a parking lot. There's a big, huge right
there near thirty third Avenue in Indian School Road. I mean,
you know, Greg Cheffer, cost need to be all over
that surveillance video, including if it goes into residential which
(28:36):
I'm not sure of, the terrain ring, doorbell cams or
something similar to them, surveillance video in all of the businesses,
as you just said, a Costco they have an excellent
video surveillance and not only that, red light cams aren't great.
They're specifically there to get your tag number. I wonder
(28:58):
if all that is being done the Acabono. I would
imagine that it is. And it's worth noting that this
is an area where there's a lot of foot traffic
as well, So it's unclear if she drove to that mcdonald'
they're walked up, But like the detective just said, it's
a very busy area and there are a lot of
businesses around that McDonald So you know, we only have
(29:22):
this one video clip from inside, but that's because that's
all that's been shared with the public. So I would
imagine there's a lot more surveillance video that's being come
through this on the heels of another knee born being abandoned,
a mystery as a baby is actually left on the
hood of a part car in Connecticut as cops hunt
(29:43):
for the man. We believe the dad fleeing the scene
in a dark colored vehicle. That just happened, and now
this across the country in Arizona Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
(30:15):
For most of you just joining us, take a listen
to our cut one David Caltabiano at three TV. It's
just as awful as you can imagine. Somebody inside of
that McDonald's restaurant found the child's body, and tonight, with
the help of surveillance video, please hope they can catch
while I was responsible. New video shows the women police
are looking for last scene, wearing a black Calvin Klein's shirt,
(30:38):
black pants and sandals, who left the bathroom around the
same time police say someone found a dead newborn baby.
Twenty four hours removed from a horrifying scene, and the
restaurant is still open with some people changing their lunch
plans when we told them what happened. I think somebody
they would do that like that. Wow. Phoenix police responded
(30:59):
to the as Food locations Sunday afternoon after someone inside
the restaurant saw the dead newborn. It's the scene that
you can ever be prepared for, is walking in somewhere
and locating an infant, a newborn infant. Heather Burner, with
a National Safe Haven Alliance, says situations like this should
never happen, but it has. She counts this as the
(31:20):
eighth child abandonment this year across America. It may have
nothing to do with the mother's background, think about it.
I remember one of the first cases that gained national
notoriety in addition to all of suddrects with the so
called prom mom, who I now understand is out of
(31:41):
jail and is married with children. But there was the
Amy Grossman case. She and her college sweetheart. She got
pregnant with her by her college sweetheart. She had every
advantage you can imagine, loving parents, middle to upper class
(32:02):
family in college, the world before her. Knowing her choices,
she and the boyfriend choose to kill the baby and
throw it in a dumpster. Take a listen to our
friends at Stories from the Grave podcast cut Sea, who
were perfect teens high school sweethearts. Then she got pregnant,
(32:25):
they got scared, and the baby ended up dead. The
New Jersey teens both eighteen, Who's shocking baby dead and
dumpster in Baby Slayer's story made headlines around the world.
That was in nineteen ninety six. Amy delivered her baby
boy in a comfort in motel in Newark, Delaware in November,
(32:47):
assisted only by her then boyfriend Brian Pearson, who later
threw the baby into a dumpster. In that case, the
baby suffered severe skull fracturing. That's how the baby was
killed by Brian Peterson, and they threw the baby in
a dumpster. Very often you don't hear the name of
(33:09):
the biodad. In that case, we know it was Brian Peterson.
In the Connecticut case, I just mentioned to you a
male abandoned the baby on the hood of a car.
I wonder why that is, Doctor Bethany Marshall that we
blame the mom, what the dad? The bio dad doesn't
notice the girlfriend fiance a wife is pregnant and then
(33:33):
doesn't question, Hey, where's the baby. I think that's a
very interesting question, and I was wondering that with this
case to where was the father. And in the two
cases you mentioned where the baby had the skull fracture,
the baby was left on the hood of the car.
You have two people conspiring together to commit a crime.
(33:53):
Just like any other crime where there's duos involved, whether
it's the DC snipers case or you know, serial killers
acting in concert, you have two people conspiring and making
a plan together. And I think you know, as a society,
we think that if a baby is born, it's primarily
the mother's responsibility. This is the mother and the father's
(34:16):
responsibility to nurture the child, raise the child. But to
get around the fact that the mother apparently is the
one that leaves the baby in the McDonald's. To Bianca Bono,
a reporter with twelve News and Phoenix, what are police
doing to find or other than I hope gathering surveillance video, Well,
(34:37):
you know, they're they've interviewed people who were there at
the McDonald and in the area, and they've actually put
a call out to the public saying that there were
more witnesses who were there at the scene when this happened,
but they left prior to police officers arriving. So they're
asking the public right now that if you were in
that McDonald or you saw anything and you left before
officers arrived, they're asking that you come forward and give
(34:59):
it statement. Well, it's very difficult for me to believe
again that with this surveillance, as finally taken as it is.
You see her walking in to the McDonald's, and you
know what's interesting, Bianca Bono, I don't see her carrying anything.
That's right. You don't see her carrying anything throughout the
(35:20):
entirety of the video. As I mentioned before, it's a
pretty long video. You see her walk into that bathroom.
She pulls at the door handle of first time and
sees that the doors locked, so she comes back right
past the camera, and an undetermined amount of time later
she goes back when the doors opened up, and she
goes inside, and then she comes back out. But at
(35:42):
no point is she carrying anything in her hand. She
would have to have had the baby concealed on her person.
Catherine Marsh absolutely, and from what I've seen of the video,
there's not a lot of places within her outfit to
have the baby concealed either. You know, I've looked at it.
The only way I see that it could have happened
as if she had it concealed in the front of
(36:03):
her shirt, because when she walks in, you see her
back and her hair, her just below shoulder length hair.
I'm looking at it right now. She's pulling on the door.
She turns around like now what looks at the man's bathroom,
and walks forward, and she is adjusting her shirt on
her right side. You see her pulling at her shirt
(36:26):
and then if she leaves holding the bottom of her
T shirt in the front. Now she's coming back in,
and I'm wondering if she did not have the baby
concealed in the front of her shirt somehow. What about that,
Katherine Marsh That is completely a possibility. It could also
be she was holding her baby because she was having
(36:46):
contractions for labor and she was holding her stomach as
she's going into the bathroom and then giving birth to
the child. Bianca Bono, it doesn't look like she's pregnant
when she walks in. Was I don't know if any
report that there was blood in the bathroom at the
umbilical cord had been cut. Well, she's not in the
(37:07):
bathroom very long at all, certainly not a time to
give birth and the video makes it a bit unclear
to have a sense of time because there are no
timestamps on the video, and they're very well could have
been more of a scene in that bathroom. Police just
have chosen not to make those details public at this time.
Straight back to doctor Bethany Marshall, Doctor Bethany, why Nancy
(37:31):
contempt towards the child, hatred towards to the child, Fear
that a child is going to interfere with an idealized life,
perhaps a new romantic partner where the mother thinks, boy,
if I have a baby, he's not going to love me.
Big dreams, big plans for one's own life. Lack of
a capacity to imagine into the life of the infant,
(37:54):
that that infant could go to school, could go to Harvard,
a big job, could provide grandchildren, no imaginative capacity that
this little being that is ruthlessly stuffed into a trash
can is a person who could be on roller scapes,
who could blow out birthday candles. The reason I'm painting
this picture for your listeners is that this picture does
(38:18):
not reside in the mind of the mother. Think about
when you were pregnant with the twins. Nancy didn't you
have hopes and dreams? Didn't you think about every stage
of their life? Don't you think I'm sure today you're
going to be thinking about what Lucy and John David
have coming, what they have for their summer plans, what
you did on spring break. They are in the mind
(38:42):
of their mother. And in my field, we think one
of the biggest catastrophes is when a person is born
and they do not reside in the mind of the mother.
Nobody thinks about them. And this is really the catastrophe
that we're talking about today. Is not just homicide, it's
not just murder. Those are terrible things. We talk about
(39:02):
crime all the time, but something many of your viewers
suffer from is that they may have been born into
the world with nobody thinking about them. And that is
so essential to being human and being alive, and that's
what's absent in a catastrophic way. Here. The search is
on for the woman that police believe killed a kneeborn baby,
(39:25):
leaving it it's dead body in a busy McDonald's. If
you have information for eight zero witness w I n
SS We wait as justice unfolds, and let me remind
everyone we don't know if this mother regrets the deed,
(39:47):
but the law is clear. One may immediately regret the deed,
but that does not negate and tip at the time
of the crime. Good by the
Crime Stories with Nancy Greece all across America at this
very minute, people are going to McDonald's, whether you drive through,
or a diet coke or a decaf, whether you go
in for a big mac. That slogan sticks in everybody's
(00:30):
mind in the back to all be Patty special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles,
and he's on a sesame seed bun. You can get
whatever you want there, but the shock of a lifetime
one McDonald's customer's got. It's something she'll never forget. I
Meanancy Grace, this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being
with us here at Fox Nation and Serious XM one eleven.
(00:54):
I very often told yourrs when I saw them cringe
or turn away, I felt the same way reviewing the evidence,
much less delivering the message to the jury. But I
begged them, do not turn away from the truth. Take
a listen to our friends at three TV and CBS five.
(01:18):
It's just as awful as you can imagine. Somebody inside
of that McDonald's restaurant found the child's body, and tonight,
with the help of surveillance video, please hope they can
catch mom. I was responsible. New video shows the women
police are looking for last scene wearing a black Calvin
Kleine's shirt, black pants and sandals, who left the bathroom
around the same time. Police say someone found a dead
(01:41):
newborn baby twenty four hours removed from a horrifying scene,
and the restaurant is still open with some people changing
their lunch plans when we told them what happened. I
think somebody that would do that like that man. Wow.
Phoenix Police responded to the fast food locations Sunday afternoon
after someone inside the restaurant saw the dead newborn. It's
(02:02):
the scene that you can ever be prepared for, is
walking in somewhere and locating an infant, a newborn infant.
Heather Burner, with a National Safe Haven Alliance, says situations
like this should never happen, but it has. She counts
this as the eighth child abandonment this year across America.
That's our friend David called beano speaking guys. According to
(02:27):
one study, eight children abandoned. That's that we know of.
How many other children, babies, infants are either thrown away
in dumpsters or killed and abandoned, their bodies hidden somewhere.
It happens all the time. This time a tiny baby's
(02:53):
body found in a busy McDonald's. Again, I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
You know, I was just talking about telling a jury
not to turn away from the evidence, but I actually did.
I let our friends at three TV and CBS five
(03:15):
describe what happened, but I will now describe it. A
tiny baby found in a busy McDonald's near Phoenix, Arizona.
Video surveillance shows a woman walking out wearing a black
Calvin Cline T shirt, black tights. She has long, dark hair,
(03:41):
seems to me it may be frosted. She appears to
be a white female. What more do we know about her?
Not much, but I can guarantee you this, when this
picture is disseminated across the Americas, someone's going to recognize her.
(04:02):
And let me be clear, we are not discussing or
attacking the right to choose the debortion. That's a whole
another cannon worms. What we are talking about is delivering
a child, a healthy child, then murdering the child and
(04:25):
disposing of the body. Catherine marsh is joining US Special
Victims Liaison for State Attorney's Office in Charles County, con
founder of Right Response Counseling and the No Gray Zoned podcast,
also with me. Renowned psychoanalyst joining us from Beverly Hills,
(04:46):
doctor Bethany Marshall, not only renowned psychoanalysts, but star of
a new Netflix series, Bleeding Empire. Doctor Kendall Crowns joining
US Chief Medical Examiner Tarrant County. That's Fort Worth let
Sure University Texas, Texas, A and M. Also faculty at
University Texas Medical Branch. Greg Schaeffer joining US investigator with
(05:09):
the international anti human trafficking organization Hope for Justice, A
former Phoenix PD detective twenty two years. But first, let's
go to special guest reporter with A twelve News Phoenix
Bianca Bono, Bianca, thank you for being with us. Tell
me what happened at the McDonald's. What do we know?
So what we know is that on March twenty seventh,
(05:31):
around two o'clock in the afternoon, in broad daylight. Okay,
wait a minute, you just stole my cash phrase and
broad daylight. I mean, that's a whole nother layer that
we're gonna throw at doctor Bethany Marshall. Will everybody statistically, mentally, psychologically,
broad daylight is a whole nother animal. That said, sorry, Bianca,
(05:56):
Bono twelve news, go ahead is no problem. So police
officers responded to that McDonald's restaurant near thirty third Avenue
and Indian School, about ten minutes northwest of downtown Phoenix,
to a call about an injured person, is what they said.
And when they showed up, they located a newborn baby
(06:17):
boy inside the bathroom of the McDonald's. We're told that
officers then attempted life saving measures, and then the Phoenix
Fire Department showed up and did the same, but unfortunately,
they pronounced that infant dead at the scene. Bianca, you've
got a ranking from the fire Hydrump. You're giving me
so much so quickly, I can't digest it. I've got
(06:41):
a breakdown every sentence you said. Oh, you gave me
a flashback to law school. I was a Shakespearean literature
major when I got a hold of my first US
Supreme Court decision. One sentence can be a paragraph. I
would have to dissect each part of the sentence to
understand what they were saying. Okay, let's take let's take
(07:03):
an analysis. Let's analyze what Bionka Bono has just told us,
first of you, doctor Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst. Doctor Bethany, you're
throwing away at newborn baby boy, an infant dead, And
of course I'm going to come back to you, doctor
Kendall Crowns on how long had the baby been dead?
How do we know could have just died? All that,
(07:26):
I'm going to come back to you. To Greg Sheffer,
how often is this kind of crime, a murder affected
in daylight hours, in broad in plain view. But to
doctor Bethany Marshall, I mean, no shame, no shame. I mean,
there's one thing, dumping a baby in a dumpster out
behind a building at midnight, which is bad enough, But
(07:50):
to have the khonies to walk into a McDonald's in
broad daylight when people are in there ordering their cheeseburgers,
or is David and I deuces, we don't drink soda
at home, A sneaky DCA. I mean, they're in there
and she walks in with a dead baby and leaves
(08:11):
it in the bathroom. There's so many layers. Just let's
start with broad daylight. Nancy. There's a lot of layers.
There's so much to say about this. I mean primarily
to say layers to the onion's that's very old. Please
don't okay, go, Okay, Well, then let's start with the
fact that this woman probably never bonded with this baby,
(08:32):
even in utero, even at conception that something happened in
this woman's life. Have you have you looked at up
because very often people ask me, what are you looking
down at? Well, for the longest time at HLN, they
had installed, as you know, Bethany a baby, a baby
cam so I could see the children because I couldn't
(08:54):
bear to be away from them at night. I remember
the man cam. It was actually part of the disk. Okay,
I look at them on one side and on the
other side, I would look at pictures. That's what I'm
looking at right now. I'm looking at a picture of
her walking out in the black tides, down to the ankle,
some brown sandals. Okay, I'm not sure, but I believe
(09:15):
she's got a pedicure, a black T shirt that says
Calvin Kleine something under it. She's got hair just below
her shoulders. Oh, it's definitely frosted, dark maybe light brown,
hair parted I think kind of in the middle it's long,
and from about the eye level down it looks like
(09:39):
it's been frosted a little bit. That's what I'm looking at. Okay,
go ahead, m well, Nancy. In order to assess the situation,
we could look historically, what happened when she was impregnated,
what happened in terms of her family relationships. Why during
the day, Why is she waddling When I was looking
at the video you're looking at it looks like she's
kind of w budding into the McDonald's and she's waddling out.
(10:03):
And it's hard to know from the security camera what
the time laps is between when she enters the bathroom
and when she aches it. So I have no idea
because I'm a non medical psychoanalyst. Did she give birth
in the bathroom or did she carry the baby in
These are so many questions for other guests, But what
I will say from a psychodynamic perspective is that this
(10:26):
is a woman. While she may have been motivated by
criminality and being homicidal, she likely never bonded with the baby.
And a large recent study of women who secretly abandoned
their babies, one of the things that was learned is
that these women have a great deal of shame about
the pregnancy. They do not bond with the baby from
(10:47):
the time of conception. There's often intimate partner violence, poor
levels of parental support, appolling, lack of prenatal care play.
I know, I know to go with that fine, because
(11:08):
doctor Bessani, I'm not asking you about the historical analysis
of her impregnation. I believe you said that when she
got pregnant, because I don't care, and I don't care
what her family situation is, if she did not want
to commit murder, um don't If don't you have a
very unfettered pro choice position in Arizona. Bianca Bono, the
(11:35):
position is actually largely pro life in Arizona. You do
you do? You have abortion laws there? I mean, can
a woman get an abortion there? She can't. Spring Breakers
and parents beware the disappearance of honor student Natalie Holloway
(11:55):
is a warning. We had to Aruba with Natalie's mom.
What can we learn? Nancy Grace's shocking new investigation streaming
now only on Fox Nation. Sign up today Crime Stories
with Nancy Grace to Katherine Mars joining me special victim's Liaison,
(12:18):
I'm not taking a position for or against abortion. Right now,
I'm not discussing pro choice or pro life right now.
I am discussing murdering a baby right now. You give
birth to the baby and then you murder it. Why
would you inflict that pain on a newborn infant? I
(12:39):
don't organ it, Catherine Well, I think it's a hard
thing for any of us to wrap our mind around.
But as prosecutors, the first thing we have to establish
is was the baby born alive or was it a
stillborn birth? In order for us to get to that
homicide murder component for court. Okay, you know, you just
(13:01):
you're giving me another flashback, because if you're giving birth
to a baby and the baby is stillborn, why would
you just not call nine one one? Why? Because that's
what I would do if I had suddenly given birth
and the baby was still born, I would call nine
one one and try to revive the baby. I would
not put in a bag and dump it. Also, the
(13:22):
fact that nobody is identifying this woman tells me nobody
knews she was pregnant, which means she likely concealed her pregnancy.
Another indicator to doctor Kendall, Crown's chief medical examiner, Tarrant County.
How can we tell if the baby was alive or stillborn? Well,
the main thing you can do is you take the
(13:43):
infant flungs and you placed them in like water, and
if they float, it shows that they had taken a
breath and filled their lungs with the air. Also, you
can look at it histologically or under the microscope looking
for the actual air sex to show expansion. And those
are the two kind of rough indicators for them to
(14:04):
have taken a breath. They're not exact, but they're the
best we have. Doctor Kendall Crowns, I'm just a j
D or the MD. Did you say that one more time?
And very slowly forming place. So the ways you can
tell if an infant has taken a breath at breath
that wasn't born as still born as you can take
the lungs out of the body cavity and so you
(14:25):
have an autopsy. Yes, yes, were the big gigantic cut
the v from the shoulders going mid white in a
straight down like a giant y. Right Go ahead, pluck
the skin away, cut the chest plate off, then take
the lungs out and then he placed the lungs in
(14:46):
a jar of water, and if they float, it shows
that the lungs had had air in them, were filled
with air. You can also cut the lungs up and
take small portions of them and look at them under
a microscope and they you'll see under the microscope that
the air sacks or the alveolol have filled with air,
showing that they took the breath. You know. Greg Shaeffer,
(15:10):
investigator with the international anti human trafficking organization Hope for
Justice and former Phoenix PD twenty two years and Crimes
on Children. Just hearing doctor Kendall Crowns, it's very sobering.
It's very sobering to think of a tiny baby undergoing autopsy,
(15:33):
having its lungs removed and putting them in a jar
of water to see if mommy murdered it. It's kind
of overwhelming. Well, yeah, obviously it's disturbing, and just like
we already talked about, there was no connection to the
child and that's why she allegedly she left it in
the McDonald's. But what's really sad is that there's four
(15:57):
fire stations within five minutes of that location. They're all
safe havens, and there's three hospitals within fifteen minutes of
that location, which were all safe havens as well, So
that child could have been delivered to any one of
those places, no questions asked, no questions asked, the baby
could I had researched that, and I found safe havens
less than ten minutes away from the McDonald's where the
(16:19):
baby was left. You're saying it's actually five minutes. Five minutes, yeah,
Well there's four fire stations right around that McDonald I
used to work in Maryville right there, so there's four
fire stations there, three hospitals less than fifteen minutes away,
one of them Phoenix Children's Hospital. So the child could
(16:40):
have been taken to a facility and turned over and
no questions asked, anonymous, And she could have been on
her way, but she chose this route. It's unfortunate. I
think down the road, you know she's going to get
identified and they'll probably go she's gonna get identified. Speaking
of safe haven take us an our cut too again.
(17:02):
This is David Kultbiano with RETV and CBS five. Arizona
law let's parents who are loved ones surrender unharmed babies
who are up to thirty days old to police departments,
fire stations, and hospitals without repercussion. Heather says, there are
plenty of resources to avoid this crime. The saddest part
of all of this is that they don't have any choices.
(17:23):
They are at the whim or will of their parents.
It's traumatic, I think, because we know there are so
many options now, there are so many safe alternatives to
placing your baby in an unsafe or dangerous situation. Back
to this, McDonald's safe havens are less than a ten
minute drive away. Now people in this area want to
(17:43):
see an arrest. Another look at this security camp video
of the woman police are searching for. Okay, let's talk
about that. How are we gonna find the mom? And
to you Bianca Bono joining us from twelve News and Phoenix.
Has there been any speculation that the child had just
(18:04):
died or was still alive in the bathroom or is
it believed the child was dead when she brought it in.
That's the big question that we're still waiting to get answered.
But what I can tell you is more of what
police told us initially when they notified the public about
this incident. They told us that they did locate the
(18:27):
newborn baby boy inside the bathroom, and they said that
they did attempt life saving measures, and then the scene's
fire department showed up and did the same. I have
read a tiny portion of the police report that says
the boy was pronounced dead at the scene. Anyone with
information is asked asked to contact Silent Witness at four
(18:52):
eight zero Witness WI t N E SS for eight zero.
For those of you just joining us, A newborn infant,
a baby boy, has been found dead at a very
busy McDonald's in the last months. It's the second time
(19:18):
that a child has been abandon Take a listen to
our cut four our friends at kpn X twelve. In
twenty nineteen, another infant was found in the bathroom trash
can at an Amazon warehouse. The mother in that case
later telling officials she didn't know she was pregnant and
had given birth to a stillborn. She was not prosecuted.
In the US this year, in twenty twenty two, there
(19:40):
have been eight illegal abandonments. For some reason, we are
seeing that there are a lot of these cases right
now in Arizona. There are options. Infants can be brought
to a designated safe haven location like hospitals and fire
departments up to thirty days after birth. Why didn't that
happen here now in the case, since this is becoming
(20:02):
the point of our discussion. In the case of the
mother in twenty nineteen, that child was determined to have
been born still born, still a crime to disposed of
human body, but in this case we have no indication
(20:22):
this baby was still born. It's not by far the
first time this has happened. Take a listen to our
friends at Station fifteen on the Allison lightsh case. Now
at six day in court, a young mother who abandoned
her infant inside a dumpster is formally charged with attempted murder.
(20:45):
Good evening, I'm Heather Heren, I'm Mark Bellinger. Thanks for
joining us. Alison Lesh is nineteen. She was emotional as
she appeared in Decalp Superior Court this afternoon where she
entered a plea of not guilty. News Channel fifteen Janie
Allen was inside the courtroom and joins us. Now the
courthouse with the latest well Mark and had there. Alison
lesh gets face up to fifty years behind bars for
(21:05):
attempt and murder. She allegedly gave birth and then threw
her newborn baby away like trash, and tonight we are
learning new shocking details about how she did it. Alison
will tell us what happened. People want to know your
side of the story. Nineteen year old Alison Lesh didn't
have anything to say to our cameras as she made
her way to Declp Superior Court, but she did become
(21:27):
emotional as she neared the door inside. She was formally
charged with attempted murder for allegedly wrapping her newborn baby
girl inside a trash bag and tossing her inside a dumpster.
Lesh had only been living here at Forest Point Apartments
in Auburn for about a month, and court documents are
now shutting some light on the hours leading up to
the discovery of her baby. They say Lush delivered the
(21:49):
baby inside her bedroom late Saturday night. She then wrapped
the newborn in a blanket and left her on the
floor while she cleaned up the mass, showered, and tried
to go to sleep. According to those documents, the next day,
she put the baby in a trash bag and into
the dumpster as she left for work. You know, to you,
doctor Bethany Marshall, we keep seeing the same scenario putting
(22:11):
the baby in a blanket then a trash bag. The
dichotomy of wrapping an infant in a baby blanket and
then putting it in a black trash bag and a dumpster.
It is very disturbing, Yes it is. And you know
what it shows me is actual contempt and hatred for
(22:35):
the child and actually prioritizing the needs of the mother
over that of the child. I know that's going to
sound strange, but think about what motherhood is all about.
When we're a mother, the child's needs are more important
than anybody else on the face of the planet, and
they're more important than our own needs. And contrast that
to double triple wrapping the child like you would a
(22:56):
piece of putred trash in order to hide the child
and put the child in the dumpster. So what that
mother is doing is she's trying to secrete the child
so she won't be caught. It's all about her. It's
the most profound act of selfishness. And layer that with
the fact that this woman we're talking about did it
(23:16):
during the day. Either that's when her labor was complete,
she went into labor and it was time for her
to deliver, or there were people in her life who
would have found out she was pregnant. So she waited
until her boyfriend, her parents, siblings, people were at work
and they wouldn't find out, and that's when she went
(23:37):
and did it. And to me, that's what adds the
layer of criminality, is waiting until everybody else is a way,
so that you do it secretly. There's two kinds of abandonments.
There's open abandonment where you kind of just you leave
the child with a babysitter, you take off, you never
contact the babysitter, or you leave them, leave your child
(23:57):
with the grandparents and then you leave the country. That's
an open abandonment. Then there's a secret one. It's when
you secrete the infant away, you kill the child, or
there's a stillborn like we talked about, you put the
child in a dumpster or in a trash can, and
at that point the child is so devalued, such a
nothing in the mind of the infant of the mother
(24:18):
that it turns the whole idea of motherhood on its
head and it's really a disgusting act. Nancy. The phenomena
of killing your baby at birth was brought to the
forefront with the case of the so called prom mom
Melissa Drexler, who at her prom goes into the bathroom,
(24:41):
gives birth, goes back onto the dance floor, and special
requests the song Unforgiven take a listen to our cut
b this is Unreasonable Doubt podcast. Upon arriving to the whole,
she soon fled to the bathroom. Concerned friends followed Melissa
(25:02):
and started to wait outside the toilet stool she had
barricaded herself into to get rid of her peers. She said,
go tell the boys, I'll be right out. Within just
thirty minutes, Melissa Draxsled delivered a healthy, six pound baby
boy alive. He cut the umbilical cord on the edge
(25:22):
of the metal sanitary waistbin inside the toilet stool. He
then took her baby out of the toilet, wrapped a
series of garbage bags around him, placed him inside into
the garbage bag, and then threw him into the trash. Can.
I mean that's a whole another layer of guilt in
(25:42):
my mind. Let's go out to Katherine Mars joining me
Special Victims Liaison State Attorney's Office. Katherine. There, she goes
out on the dance dooor continues to dance to Metallica's unforgiven. Absolutely.
It certainly goes to show intent, state of mind, and
quite frankly, just how callous she was in the abandonment
(26:03):
in that of the child after she gives birth. The
fact that she could cut the umbilical cord, wrap the
child and then take the child to the trash, those
are all steps that go to the premeditation and laying
every single bit of it out in front of a jury.
To Bianca Bona, a reporter with Knees twelve in Phoenix,
(26:25):
that's a really good surveillance video. I find it very
hard to believe she has not been identified yet. Where
has this been disseminated. It's been disseminated all over the
Greater Phoenix area and actually really across the entire state
of Arizona. And you're right, the video is crystal clear,
and it's a long video as well, so you get
(26:46):
a really good look at her top to bottom as
she goes to walk into the bathroom, attempts to open
the door a first time and it's locked, and then
goes back up second time. So it's a fairly long video.
So as of the latest information we have from police,
she hasn't been identified, but they're doing so much behind
the scenes, so I wouldn't be shocked if they already
(27:09):
know who this person is, you know. Another issue is
McDonald's has surveillance video on the inside, video surveillance cams
on the inside and the outside. To Greg Cheffer, I
find it really difficult to believe that there is not
video of her leaving getting into some kind of a car,
even if you can't see the tag, which I believe
(27:30):
in Arizona you have tag on the front and the back,
not just the back as in many states. But even
if you can't see the tag, you can get the model, make,
and color of the car, figure out how many people
in that area have that car. That's not hard to do.
Then cross reference to driver's license once you get title
(27:51):
and registration. I mean, it takes a minute. It takes
somebody to sit down and do that research. But that's
how to do it right. Well, Like like she said,
they're probably doing a lot of that behind the scenes.
They're probably they probably grabbed all the footage and then
an entire square right there and they're going through it
(28:12):
doing that. I think there's a Costco right over there too,
and Costco usually has really good footage as well. Oh oh,
I imagine they're doing that across the street. Really, Oh,
it's in a parking lot. There's a big, huge right
there near thirty third Avenue in Indian School Road. I mean,
you know, Greg Cheffer, cost need to be all over
that surveillance video, including if it goes into residential which
(28:36):
I'm not sure of, the terrain ring, doorbell cams or
something similar to them, surveillance video in all of the businesses,
as you just said, a Costco they have an excellent
video surveillance and not only that, red light cams aren't great.
They're specifically there to get your tag number. I wonder
(28:58):
if all that is being done the Acabono. I would
imagine that it is. And it's worth noting that this
is an area where there's a lot of foot traffic
as well, So it's unclear if she drove to that mcdonald'
they're walked up, But like the detective just said, it's
a very busy area and there are a lot of
businesses around that McDonald So you know, we only have
(29:22):
this one video clip from inside, but that's because that's
all that's been shared with the public. So I would
imagine there's a lot more surveillance video that's being come
through this on the heels of another knee born being abandoned,
a mystery as a baby is actually left on the
hood of a part car in Connecticut as cops hunt
(29:43):
for the man. We believe the dad fleeing the scene
in a dark colored vehicle. That just happened, and now
this across the country in Arizona Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
(30:15):
For most of you just joining us, take a listen
to our cut one David Caltabiano at three TV. It's
just as awful as you can imagine. Somebody inside of
that McDonald's restaurant found the child's body, and tonight, with
the help of surveillance video, please hope they can catch
while I was responsible. New video shows the women police
are looking for last scene, wearing a black Calvin Klein's shirt,
(30:38):
black pants and sandals, who left the bathroom around the
same time police say someone found a dead newborn baby.
Twenty four hours removed from a horrifying scene, and the
restaurant is still open with some people changing their lunch
plans when we told them what happened. I think somebody
they would do that like that. Wow. Phoenix police responded
(30:59):
to the as Food locations Sunday afternoon after someone inside
the restaurant saw the dead newborn. It's the scene that
you can ever be prepared for, is walking in somewhere
and locating an infant, a newborn infant. Heather Burner, with
a National Safe Haven Alliance, says situations like this should
never happen, but it has. She counts this as the
(31:20):
eighth child abandonment this year across America. It may have
nothing to do with the mother's background, think about it.
I remember one of the first cases that gained national
notoriety in addition to all of suddrects with the so
called prom mom, who I now understand is out of
(31:41):
jail and is married with children. But there was the
Amy Grossman case. She and her college sweetheart. She got
pregnant with her by her college sweetheart. She had every
advantage you can imagine, loving parents, middle to upper class
(32:02):
family in college, the world before her. Knowing her choices,
she and the boyfriend choose to kill the baby and
throw it in a dumpster. Take a listen to our
friends at Stories from the Grave podcast cut Sea, who
were perfect teens high school sweethearts. Then she got pregnant,
(32:25):
they got scared, and the baby ended up dead. The
New Jersey teens both eighteen, Who's shocking baby dead and
dumpster in Baby Slayer's story made headlines around the world.
That was in nineteen ninety six. Amy delivered her baby
boy in a comfort in motel in Newark, Delaware in November,
(32:47):
assisted only by her then boyfriend Brian Pearson, who later
threw the baby into a dumpster. In that case, the
baby suffered severe skull fracturing. That's how the baby was
killed by Brian Peterson, and they threw the baby in
a dumpster. Very often you don't hear the name of
(33:09):
the biodad. In that case, we know it was Brian Peterson.
In the Connecticut case, I just mentioned to you a
male abandoned the baby on the hood of a car.
I wonder why that is, Doctor Bethany Marshall that we
blame the mom, what the dad? The bio dad doesn't
notice the girlfriend fiance a wife is pregnant and then
(33:33):
doesn't question, Hey, where's the baby. I think that's a
very interesting question, and I was wondering that with this
case to where was the father. And in the two
cases you mentioned where the baby had the skull fracture,
the baby was left on the hood of the car.
You have two people conspiring together to commit a crime.
(33:53):
Just like any other crime where there's duos involved, whether
it's the DC snipers case or you know, serial killers
acting in concert, you have two people conspiring and making
a plan together. And I think you know, as a society,
we think that if a baby is born, it's primarily
the mother's responsibility. This is the mother and the father's
(34:16):
responsibility to nurture the child, raise the child. But to
get around the fact that the mother apparently is the
one that leaves the baby in the McDonald's. To Bianca Bono,
a reporter with twelve News and Phoenix, what are police
doing to find or other than I hope gathering surveillance video, Well,
(34:37):
you know, they're they've interviewed people who were there at
the McDonald and in the area, and they've actually put
a call out to the public saying that there were
more witnesses who were there at the scene when this happened,
but they left prior to police officers arriving. So they're
asking the public right now that if you were in
that McDonald or you saw anything and you left before
officers arrived, they're asking that you come forward and give
(34:59):
it statement. Well, it's very difficult for me to believe
again that with this surveillance, as finally taken as it is.
You see her walking in to the McDonald's, and you
know what's interesting, Bianca Bono, I don't see her carrying anything.
That's right. You don't see her carrying anything throughout the
(35:20):
entirety of the video. As I mentioned before, it's a
pretty long video. You see her walk into that bathroom.
She pulls at the door handle of first time and
sees that the doors locked, so she comes back right
past the camera, and an undetermined amount of time later
she goes back when the doors opened up, and she
goes inside, and then she comes back out. But at
(35:42):
no point is she carrying anything in her hand. She
would have to have had the baby concealed on her person.
Catherine Marsh absolutely, and from what I've seen of the video,
there's not a lot of places within her outfit to
have the baby concealed either. You know, I've looked at it.
The only way I see that it could have happened
as if she had it concealed in the front of
(36:03):
her shirt, because when she walks in, you see her
back and her hair, her just below shoulder length hair.
I'm looking at it right now. She's pulling on the door.
She turns around like now what looks at the man's bathroom,
and walks forward, and she is adjusting her shirt on
her right side. You see her pulling at her shirt
(36:26):
and then if she leaves holding the bottom of her
T shirt in the front. Now she's coming back in,
and I'm wondering if she did not have the baby
concealed in the front of her shirt somehow. What about that,
Katherine Marsh That is completely a possibility. It could also
be she was holding her baby because she was having
(36:46):
contractions for labor and she was holding her stomach as
she's going into the bathroom and then giving birth to
the child. Bianca Bono, it doesn't look like she's pregnant
when she walks in. Was I don't know if any
report that there was blood in the bathroom at the
umbilical cord had been cut. Well, she's not in the
(37:07):
bathroom very long at all, certainly not a time to
give birth and the video makes it a bit unclear
to have a sense of time because there are no
timestamps on the video, and they're very well could have
been more of a scene in that bathroom. Police just
have chosen not to make those details public at this time.
Straight back to doctor Bethany Marshall, Doctor Bethany, why Nancy
(37:31):
contempt towards the child, hatred towards to the child, Fear
that a child is going to interfere with an idealized life,
perhaps a new romantic partner where the mother thinks, boy,
if I have a baby, he's not going to love me.
Big dreams, big plans for one's own life. Lack of
a capacity to imagine into the life of the infant,
(37:54):
that that infant could go to school, could go to Harvard,
a big job, could provide grandchildren, no imaginative capacity that
this little being that is ruthlessly stuffed into a trash
can is a person who could be on roller scapes,
who could blow out birthday candles. The reason I'm painting
this picture for your listeners is that this picture does
(38:18):
not reside in the mind of the mother. Think about
when you were pregnant with the twins. Nancy didn't you
have hopes and dreams? Didn't you think about every stage
of their life? Don't you think I'm sure today you're
going to be thinking about what Lucy and John David
have coming, what they have for their summer plans, what
you did on spring break. They are in the mind
(38:42):
of their mother. And in my field, we think one
of the biggest catastrophes is when a person is born
and they do not reside in the mind of the mother.
Nobody thinks about them. And this is really the catastrophe
that we're talking about today. Is not just homicide, it's
not just murder. Those are terrible things. We talk about
(39:02):
crime all the time, but something many of your viewers
suffer from is that they may have been born into
the world with nobody thinking about them. And that is
so essential to being human and being alive, and that's
what's absent in a catastrophic way. Here. The search is
on for the woman that police believe killed a kneeborn baby,
(39:25):
leaving it it's dead body in a busy McDonald's. If
you have information for eight zero witness w I n
SS We wait as justice unfolds, and let me remind
everyone we don't know if this mother regrets the deed,
(39:47):
but the law is clear. One may immediately regret the deed,
but that does not negate and tip at the time
of the crime. Good by the
Host
Nancy Grace
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